October 20, 2009

This guy isn't a millionaire; not even close. He's not even a hundred-aire. Oh no. He's a straight-up uno-aire. He literally has one dollar in his checking account and even less than that in his jeans because his pockets have holes in them so the change falls out. He still uses pay phones for nebulous reasons. All of his friends are as skinny and threadbaren as he is and they have American Gladiator-esque names like Zap, Blaze, Turbo, and Viper. Because he's never had a job that's been "on the books," he's never paid taxes. Everytime you hang out, you end up having to drive him on some boring errand like taking him to the DMV to renew his expired license or dropping him off to the Chinatown bus to stumble back to his Brooklyn hovel.

He'll use your shower but slather your fancy products on the wrong body part. He'll apply your Keihl's face mask on his leg, your grapefruit sugar scrub on his hair, and your Frederick Fekkai deep conditioner on his armpits. Because he used everything incorrectly, he'll emerge from the shower greasier than before he got in. He either has freakishly long fingernails or none at all from years of nervous nail-biting. Although he's painfully skinny from malnutrition, he'll turn down your offers to make him food. If anything, he'll ask for a beer while you make him breakfast. He won't finish the breakfast, but he'll finish the beer.

He'll do some big odd job like move his friends across town and live off those earnings for an entire season. He'll blow half of his money on a parka coat from H&M and the rest will go to cheap beer and cigarettes until it runs out.

The strange thing about these kinds of guys is how neat their rooms are. They may only have three shirts, but they're always folded in the corner nicely. They're clean freaks with the few possessions they have. It's strange, but welcome behavior. Here he is in all of his skinny, poor glory: